


Better Devils

by rhombus



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, First Time, Historical Inaccuracy, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, bucky makes some bad choices, cliches, desperate times call for turning your best friend into a demon, oh so many cliches, squint and you'll see it crossover
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-03-01
Updated: 2014-06-29
Packaged: 2018-01-12 15:31:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1190322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhombus/pseuds/rhombus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>"Would you can it, Callaghan? He's dying." </em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Yeah. So? What's he need? Spit it out, Barnes, ain't got all night."</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"I need you to make him like you."</em>
</p><p>OR: That one time Steve became a vampire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer that I know basically jack-squat about the 1940s and it probably shows and I'm sorry.

Bucky hadn't made up his mind for sure until he'd seen the specks of blood on Steve's fist.

"You cough that up?"

"I'm all right," Steve said, voice somehow both hoarse and wet, barely audible.

Bucky just eyed him, silent, swallowing hard on the pebble of dread that had stuck itself to his throat.

There was a way. He could do it—could fix him. Make him better. Stronger.

"I'm all right, Buck," Steve said again, slurring the words, before falling back into either sleep or unconsciousness. Bucky couldn't tell which, and it made his pulse jump like an electric wire.

"Why you always gotta pick fights you can't win, huh?" Stubborn as a damn mule, was Steve, thinking he could take on the chill, that icy, bone-fingered hand reaching out for him. He'd managed to skirt its grip for twenty-some years, but it was always there, chasing after him. "Why you always gotta be so damn stupid?"

All he got was a soft wheeze in response.

Bucky's fingers trembled as he skimmed his hand over Steve's breastbone, cradled it down over his heart, felt it wobble and stutter and take just a breath too long between beats.

Oh, God. This was it. This was it. Bucky's brain hurtled around that thought over and over again, afraid to stop and really accept it. Then it would be real. Then he'd really be losing Steve.

He'd already lost everyone else, and found it wasn't so hard to keep going, but if he lost Steve? He couldn't—couldn't be in a world without Steve in it. There _wasn't_ a world without Steve in it. Not for him.

An ache started low in his chest, crawled up his throat, escaped through his mouth in a harsh sob, and then his head was on Steve's sunken chest. His shoulders shook. Tears spilled down his cheeks and wet Steve's shirt.

He allowed himself a moment to clutch Steve, to bury his face in Steve's too-warm neck, to press his lips against the sweat-stink of his clammy, fevered skin, murmuring, "Stevie, oh Steve." Words so soft they floated away as soon as they hit the air between them.

A pained moan came from above him. " _Buck_."

"Forgive me, pal." Bucky forced himself up, wiped his eyes. "You gotta forgive me." He brushed his fingers through Steve's damp hair, then he was up, out of the room, then the front door, moving fast before he had time to rethink, to un-make the terrible decision that had to be made. It _had_ to be made. The other choice, the other outcome, was unfathomable.

If Steve died on him…

_Forgive me._

* * *

 

He'd put it all together a few days before, when their reclusive neighbor upstairs had disappeared. Mrs. O'Leary claimed she saw some government men strong arm their way in and pull the old loner away with weights tied around his ankles.

Bucky had smelled the whiskey nightcap on her breath but promised her he'd check it out anyway.

"You could call the cops," he said.

"They the ones who slammed in here, aren't they?"

"You tell me."

"They _did_."

"All right, all right, I'll check it out."

The door to apartment 6A was open, splintered a bit where the bolt slotted into the frame. Looked like someone might have roughed their way in after all.

The floor was strewn with newspapers, some new, headlines blaring about the war, some old, warily tiptoeing around Hitler's slow conquest of Europe. There was a metallic stench that sat heavy in the air, just funking toward rancid.

Bucky knew that smell from too many fights and not enough laundry powder.

The place reeked of old blood.

"You think he's a goner?" Mrs. O'Leary said, poking her head through the open door while the rest of her stayed safe in the hall.

"Said you saw him leave, didn't you?" There was a cold box in the corner humming away, hinges spattered with rust. Bucky walked toward it, slowly, as if it needed mollifying.

"Said a lot of things no one usually believes," Mrs. O. replied, sounding a little too canny. "I mean, you think they got him now? Sent that demon in him back to hell, set his soul free?"

"Demon?" He was only half paying attention to her dotty reply as he opened the cold box door, anticipating all manner of gruesome nightmare awaiting him.

Instead of the torn, bleeding parts he'd halfway expected, the low light in the room illuminated on a single container of pig's blood from the butcher's shop, half empty.

"That man had a demon in him," Mrs. O. chattered on. "Saw his face one night, all... gnarled up. Caught him out back when I was smoking—oh, don't tell my husband I was smoking, y'hear—caught him with his demon's face sucking down rats like they were hot whiskies on a cold night."

"Gross, Mrs. O'Leary."

"I only smoke Luckies for my lungs."

"The rats, Mrs. O."

"Oh, that?" she said. "Yeah. Almost lost my dinner all over the fire escape. Weird fella, always lurking around in the dark, staying cooped up all day with his windows blacked out, that ain't healthy you know. People get sick doing that."

"I'm sure the dumpster rats weren't helping out much neither."

"Well, the demon probably kept his strength up, kept his body running strong."

Bucky held up the butcher's container for a closer look. Blood stains clung to the inside edge in an upside-down vee, as if their missing tenant had been drinking straight from it. He put it back in the box with a grimace.

"You keep talking about this 'demon'," Bucky said, shutting the cold box door and hopefully shutting down his gag reflex while he was at it.

"Bloodsuckers. Got 'em all over the city. Judy _(God-rest-her-soul)_ Callaghan's boy? Goner. Poor thing."

"Georgie's at the corner every night." Hollering at anyone who walked by and being a general pain in the ass, but there all the same.

"Demon," Mrs. O'Leary said.

"And all his friends?"

"Demons."

"Uh huh."

"You done in there?" she called out, all of her back in the hall again.

"Don't even know what I'm supposed to be doing." Now that he thought about it.

"Seeing if he left his rent money 'fore those suits come and got him."

"Jeez, Mrs. O. That's some cold business right there." 

"Demon money's still good money." 

Bucky shrugged. Couldn't argue with that. "Nothing here," he said, keeping mum on the congealing Campbell's blood-soup and overall feeling of decay and misery that clung to the bare white walls. 

"Well, drat. Always had a sharp hairdo, that man, and a clean shirt. Figured him for some kind of secret hoard. Jewels, maybe. Any jewels?" 

"That's dragons, Mrs. O., not vampires." 

"Don't make fun." 

"Wouldn't dream of it," he said, meeting her back in the hall and shutting the door behind him. It wouldn't close up all the way, not where it'd been broken. The door seemed to creak from behind him as he walked Mrs. O. down the stairs, a steadying hand ready at her back, but not quite touching, lest she accuse him of getting fresh with her stale old self. 

"How's little Steve doing? Haven't seen him panting up and down the stairs for a while."

Bucky tried to keep his voice steady. "Not so great, Mrs. O'Leary. Winter hit him pretty hard this year."

"Hit us all, it did. 'Cept the demons, of course, minus our stolen Mr. Hairdo." She waved a vague gesture up the stairs behind her.

Bucky had stopped himself from glancing back, and wished that door would've closed up all the way. 

 

* * *

 

"George! Hey, George!" Bucky ran down the street at breakneck speed, his feet barely hitting wet pavement before they were back up in the air again. "Georgie!" He slipped on the icy curb and only just stopped himself from slamming into the man in question. 

George Callaghan snapped a piece of gum against the top of his mouth. He had two friends with him; they weren't neighborhood boys. Bucky'd never seen them before.

"Heya, Barnes, how you been? How's little Squeak doing?" 

 _None of your damn business_ , Bucky wanted to say, to scream out, but his lungs wouldn't let him do much else but take in big gulps of air, in and out, in and out, until his breath finally caught. And it wasn't true, anyway. 

"Georgie." Another deep lungful. "I need you to do something for me." 

"Oh yeah?" There was a speculative gleam in his eyes. Eager, on the verge of predatory. 

"For Steve." 

"For little Squeak? What's he need, a new teddy bear?" 

"Would you can it, Callaghan? He's _dying_." God, Bucky thought his heart would rip out just from saying it. 

"So?" 

Bucky's jaw dropped so fast he thought he heard it pop. "So? SO? C'mon man, this is _Steve_ we're talking about. He stood up for you when lost your job, gave you what little he could after your ma passed." 

"Yeah. So?" His chewing gum smacked obnoxiously against his lip again as he picked at the dirt under his fingernails. "What's he need? Spit it out, Barnes, ain't got all night." 

"I need you to make him like you." 

George smirked at his friends, one lurking on each side of him. "Catholic? Already is, innit he?" 

Steve was about to _die_ and this asshole was making jokes? A rush of anger—at Callaghan, at the universe, at _God_ —hurtled him forward, right up into George's face. He gripped him hard around the collar of his shabby coat. "So help me God, Georgie, I will pull out all your fingernails one by one unless you start taking me seriously." 

George hissed. Literally _hissed_ at him, and his pupils narrowed into slits, his irises gone an acid-colored yellow.

"Not so smart, Barnes." He held out both arms to his pals, silently telling them to back off. Bucky hadn't noticed, but they'd surrounded him. Their eyes had shifted, too, and their faces were monstrous shadows in the dark of the alley. "You wanna ask a little nicer, maybe?" 

Bucky breathed in and out. In and out. This was insane. Absolutely insane. It was one thing to hear old Mrs. O'Leary talk about rat-scavenging loners, but this? These… _things_ surrounding him, their breath hot and acrid, their faces filled with something dark and vicious and... and completely impossible? Not exactly filling him with good feelings. 

 _And this is what you want for Steve?_  

"I just want him to be okay," he said aloud, his voice pitched high on a plea that he wished hadn't escaped him. He released George's collar, tried to take a step back—but one of them was right behind him now, boxing him in.

"Rogers, eh?" George licked his bottom lip. Bucky wanted to hurl. "Little milk-white thing, bet he's tender as veal." 

Bucky's heart beat fast against his ribs, pounded so hard he thought he might die, might keel over right then and there, without the aid of the monsters breathing down his neck. 

"Maybe we can strike some kind of deal, eh, Barnes? What'll you give me for my trouble?" George looked him up and down, those snake-eyes of his appraising. Hungry. "'Cause that's what you're asking for. Trouble."

Bucky swallowed. Which was a mistake, since it only brought George's attention straight to his neck.

_Forgive me, Steve._

"Anything," he breathed out. He clenched his fists tight, stomped down his panic. "Name it. You save Steve, I'll give you anything."

George looked at him, eyes half-lidded, placid. Almost bored, as if Bucky bargaining his own life for Steve's was passé, staler than last month's bread.

"Lucky for you, Bucky old pal, I'm feeling a mite generous. Despite you putting your hands all over me like I was some nothing, we're still friends. We'll call it a favor. One man—" He slapped a palm again Bucky's chest, rough enough to send him stepping back into the barrel-chested guy looming behind him. "—to another."

Despite being surrounded, trapped in a den of lions, Bucky's breath started feeling right again, less like he was suffocating, like his lungs were as small as Steve's. He glanced down at George's hand, heavy on his chest, immovable as a steel girder. 

That was some power, all right. Some power. 

Power like that… well. Steve could use a thing like that. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bucky, this is not a good idea. The author strongly recommends another course of action.


	2. Chapter 2

Part of him knew, rebelliously, with a bone-deep certainty, that Steve would hate him for this.

He tried to care, he really did, but he just couldn't. He was selfish, was a jerk, was weak. He'd rather have Steve alive and hating him than under the ground. Even if there was the slightest chance Steve felt about Bucky the way Bucky felt about him (he could almost admit it to himself now, what it was he really felt for Steve, when he never could before, now that Steve was a breath away from leaving him forever and it wouldn't matter how messed up in the head it made him to have that much unnatural longing inside him), even if he was throwing that all away—what good was loving someone when six feet of dirt sat on top of you?

 

* * *

  

"Wait out here," Bucky said to Callaghan and his boys. He knew there were rules with these sorts of things. Invitations were the kiss of death.

"Not so fast," said Callaghan.

"I'll be right back with Steve." It sent a pang through his stomach, thinking about what they were gonna do to Steve, right out here in the hallway.

"Isn't how it's gonna work, doll." Callaghan's voice slithered over him, sharp and sweet and threatening all at once. "You invite us in, or you get nothing."

"What?" That wasn't the deal. That was never the deal.

"Turns out I'd like a little favor in return after all." He smoothed down his shirt as if he were making a legitimate business proposal. "One little invite. That's all it'll take. And then I'll make your boy strong. So strong. He'll never suffer again." George looked up at him with eyes that were all too human. Bucky hated him. "You want that, right?"

Bucky hesitated. A cough rattled out from the apartment behind him, weak and wet and scarier than all the monsters at his doorstep put together.

"Ooh." George whistled. "Ticktock." One of his goons chuckled behind him, singsonging, " _Ticktock, ticktock_."

"Come in," Bucky blurted, desperately, stupidly.

"All of us."

"All of you. In."

"This is a real shitty place, Barnes," George said, stepping over the threshold and looking around.

Bucky bristled. "Yeah, well, next time we'll go for the dank alley look. We don't have a lot of time, okay?"

"I can tell," said one of the goons.

"Yeah," said the other one, "smells like death already."

Bucky whirled on him. "You shut your God damn lying mouth." The guy was a beast, at least six foot four, and looking like he'd stepped straight off of a football field, shoulder pads and all. Bucky didn't back down. "Georgie, get your guy here to stuff a sausage in it before I do something real stupid."

George only chuckled. "Little late for that, don't you think?" But he waved off Goon Two and put his nose in the air, as if he needed to smell his way toward Steve when there was only the one bedroom in their tiny shared apartment.

"Hey there, Pipsqueak," he said as he prowled close to Steve's still form, voice light, the same he would use to coo a waking baby. "Heard you need a little help, eh there, boy? Your good pal Barnes here has some funny ideas about help, lemme tell you."

Bucky ignored the jab. "What are you waiting for?" He tried to step into the room, but Goon One slapped a thick arm across his chest. 

"Here we go, up and at 'em," George was saying. There was a rustle of linens, another wet cough.

"Bucky?" Steve had never sounded so small before, sounded as small as he looked for once, and Bucky wanted to punch a hole through the wall. "What—?" He broke off into another sad spatter of coughs.

There was a noise then, like a shifting of bones, terrible and elemental, followed by a tinny gasp and an even softer  _no_.

Bucky chewed on his thumbnail and didn't look up from his shoes. There was a stain on the floor from the time Steve had been drawing and Bucky'd flicked the charcoal out of his fingers because he was bored and wanted Steve's attention. He was younger then, barely more than a teenager. Steve had only been cross with him for a little while anyway once Bucky had promised to sit for him for his portrait assignment. Bucky never promised he wouldn't gripe all through the sitting, though, but Steve had had a smile on his face as he placated him with every  _almost there, Buck_ and _almost done_.

He didn't know why neither of them had ever bothered to get the stain out. It'd been trampled over so many times by now he wasn't even sure it would come up at all anymore.

 _Almost there, Steve,_ Bucky whispered to himself. _Almost done._

"Don't be shy, Barnes," George said, slashing through the thought. Bucky looked up, and immediately wished he hadn't.

Steve was sitting, held up by one of George's arms around his small torso. Two dark shadows stained his neck that Bucky didn't want to think about, and his mouth—God, his lips were so _red_ —was on George's wrist. His eyes were lifeless and blank, none of the fire, the rage and defiance Bucky almost expected, but then he closed them, latched his mouth on even tighter, and when he throat started working he made a noise—low and deep and appreciative—that caught Bucky's stomach in a sudden twist. 

A flare of jealousy, red-hot and vicious, burned all through him, and how sick was he to feel that way about this? But still, it took everything he had to stop himself from lunging at George, ripping him away from Steve, ripping him apart because Steve wasn't _his_  God damn it.

But Steve wasn't Bucky's either, and that thought worked like ice water, snapping him out of his rage.

Steve was all Brooklyn's, all America's, with his patriotic heart and his true-blue courage. A stubborn little cuss who wouldn't do the smart thing if it wasn't the right thing. He was helping out the neighbors and feeding Old Man Lucca's dog, standing up for the little guys, smiling at people in what passed for a park in Red Hook as he sketched, his hair like golden wheat fields in the sunlight.

Oh, God. 

"No."

_Bucky, you stupid, selfish bastard._

"No, stop!" He rushed forward—or at least he tried to. Goon Two curled a massive hand around his arm, holding him back. "Let me go. Stop it. Just let him go. Let him go."

He pulled at the hand holding him back, tightening on him like a vice, and kept up the desperate litany,  _let him go let him go let him go let him go_ , until his throat felt raw with it, and all the while Steve sucked and licked at George's torn wrist as his skin went ghost pale, almost blue in the slice of moonlight peeking through the curtains.

"Steve!" Bucky grappled and kicked and bit down on whatever part of his captor he could get his teeth on—any other time he might've found it funny, after Steve had called him out on his overbite that one time Bucky'd told him to grow a chin already. They'd both laughed it off then, but no one was laughing now. Bucky sank his teeth hard into a meaty forearm and Goon Two howled. Skin broke and a trickle of sour blood coated Bucky's lips. He only had half a second to fight the urge to upchuck, but it was enough, and he was three steps across the tiny room and shoving George away from Steve's limp body.

"Oh God, I'm sorry, Steve, I'm so sorry, I'm sorry, sorry, I'm sorry."

George was slouching against the wall, just where Bucky's shove had left him. His lips were stained dark red, and he seemed to delight in showing Bucky that his teeth were just as stained with a grisly, wide smile. Goons One and Two stepped into the room, the latter inspecting his arm with a shrug as if he'd had nothing more than a mosquito bite. (Bucky'd heard his howl, though, and felt a tempered satisfaction with the damage he'd done.) George's smile widened even further. "Gonna do something even more stupid, _Bucky_?" He said the name on a gasp, a cruel imitation of Steve's semi-conscious confusion.

Bucky was tempted, sorely tempted, to do something real stupid, like take off George's head with his bare hands. But as he held on to Steve's lifeless body, cradled it to his chest, felt how impossibly cold it was, all the anger inside of him died. It felt like all the everything inside of him was dying, each muscle and organ aching and straining and eventually stuttering out, drying up, turning to ash. He'd lit the fire and now he had nothing but smoke and dust falling through his fingers.

"Didn't think so," George said, righting himself. "Oh, you got a little something." He gestured at Bucky's mouth. "Might wanna clean that up before your boy here wakes up and gets the wrong idea."

Bucky wiped at his mouth, came away with Goon Two's blood on his knuckles, the same color to match the stain on Steve's skin, his delicate neck with two ugly pits that should've never been put there.

"We'll just see ourselves out, yeah? Yeah. We'll be seeing ya, Barnes. Real soon, I bet." ( _"Real soon, ticktock,"_ came the singsong echo.) Heavy footsteps followed, then the front door slammed shut.

Everything in the room felt cold to the touch, the air, the threadbare sheets, Steve's wrists.

Steve would hate him for this. Bucky knew that. Had known it from the start. He stared at the wall above the mattress, thoughts completely stilled by the chill invading the room, and huddled Steve's body closer to his chest. He didn't know how long he knelt there on the small bed before one and only one thought cracked through the ice. No matter how much Steve hated him, would never forgive him for this, there was no way it could compare to how much Bucky hated himself.

 

* * *

 

Steve woke with a heavy feeling in his chest. He choked on the sudden fear that it was the flu that had laid him out, the pneumonia that'd been threatening had finally taken, that so much fluid had gotten into his lungs they were heavy enough to weigh him down in his sleep, and he'd never be able to get up again.

But that wasn't right.

That was the feeling at all. He inhaled, exhaled, in and out, first through his mouth, then through his nose. Felt no hitches, no gasps, no aching pains. Aside from his moment of panic, he didn't have any trouble at all catching his breath.

No, this feeling, strange yet familiar, it was more like...

It was more like hunger.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uh oh.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Their ages and backstories are not canonically compliant with the MCU, I found out after writing this chapter. Even though it's AU, I kinda wanted it to match up as much as possible, but I've since given up that dream.

The bedroom curtains were pulled closed, diffusing the room in the soft orange-gray half light of the overslept. Steve blinked his eyes, breathed deep, wondered why everything reeked of old socks.

"Hey," he called out, voice rusted over like an old radiator. "Hey," he tried again, louder this time. "What's with the socks?" Not the most articulate he'd ever been, but he gave himself a pass, seeing as he was still a bit groggy. And starving.

"Huh?" came the eloquent reply his question deserved from the other room.

Steve ratcheted himself up, felt his bones creak with each movement, but not with pain or his usual and maddening feebleness. This was more like the stretch of a new pair shoes, too firm instead of too soft. "You boiling every dirty sock we got, or what? I know we're hard up, but this is taking one of your culinary adventures too far, Bucky."

Metal clanged against metal, a pot against the fussy old iron cooking range most like, which didn't instill much confidence in Steve's hope for a different explanation.

"Why? You hungry?" Bucky's tone was entirely unlaced with sarcasm, and Steve's hope died a sudden and very predictable death. Didn't stop his stomach from growling again, insistent that Steve not forget the ever-growing twinge in his belly, no matter what catastrophe was on offer.

"Desperately, actually." He sat up and kicked his legs over the side of the bed.

"Don't get up," Bucky said, carrying a tin mug into the room. Whatever was in it smelled sweet and pungent, and Steve's hunger did a somersault.

He reached out both hands. "Give it here. Gimme."

Bucky came to a stop, and the line that formed between his brows when he wasn't sure about something deepened. A piece of thin gauze was wrapped around his left forearm, edges frayed like he'd been picking at it.

"You feeling all right, Steve?" His voice was all frogged up for some reason, like he needed to clear his throat. Steve looked closer at his face, saw the pink, puffy rim of his eyes, the shine in them he always got after trying to hide the fact he'd been crying. Steve always knew, had never said anything; they each of them had silently cried themselves to sleep once or twice those first few years in the orphanage.

His hunger overwhelmed him now, told him to shut up and ignore it like always, that Bucky was a big boy, capable of taking care of himself without being mollycoddled, that the only thing in the world that mattered right now was whatever was in that mug that made Steve's nostrils flare and his skin prickle and his jaw ache for how much he needed it, needed it more than whatever was sticking in Bucky's craw. His muscles felt wired on a tension coil, his fingers clawed into the bedding, his whole body felt ready to spring. To attack.

Steve shuddered, felt around for his breath like reaching for a torch in the dark. Gripped the bedding even tighter before relaxing his fingers one by one.

The feeling that'd come over him—he'd never felt anything like that before, couldn't explain it, decided to ignore it and shove it away instead of trying to. It would've been easy, satisfying even, to blame it on the muddiness of fever, but he couldn't. No, these impulses, these thoughts prowling at the back of his brain, struck with the brisk clarity of ice. 

He focused on Bucky again, on the far-off look in his eyes, like he'd lost something and couldn't accept that it was really gone.

"Hey, Buck. Are _you_ all right?"

"Hmm?" Bucky caught his eye, shook his head a little. "Oh, yeah. I'm aces." A sniff, a straightening of the shoulders. "Here. Drink this. It'll make you feel better."

"I'm fine," Steve protested, but reached for the mug greedily, because it was a lie. He wasn't. He wasn't sure what he was, but fine was definitely off the table.

He felt good, but he also felt… _wrong_ , somehow. Like he'd stepped into some other body on accident, almost the same, but slightly off. The anatomical equivalent of everything in a room being moved two inches to the left.

"What is it?" he asked, peering into the mug. It was thick, dark red, and wonderful.

"Oh. Um." Bucky scratched at the back of his neck and scrunched his nose. "Homemade restorative. Supposed to make you good as new."

"Homemade, huh?" Steve said before taking a careful sip. The soup was warm and thick, coating his tongue and throat with a gamey sweetness. It reminded him a bit of the duck blood soup they'd dared each other to try at the Polish meat market, but this was far more appetizing. "Jeez, Buck, you've been holding out on me. You really make this yourself?" The cup was emptied in three long swallows, and Steve licked his lips, angling for every last drop.

"All me," Bucky said. There was that guttural note to his voice again. He cast a furtive glance at Steve, like he didn't want to get caught looking for some reason, and picked at the frayed gauze on his forearm.

"Well. It's good. I feel better. Feel like I could even go a few rounds with that jerk who hangs out at the corner." It was a weak joke, and it earned him a weak smile in return.

"Lemme check." Bucky reached out a hesitant hand; it hovered just above Steve for a few seconds before finally descending.

His fingers, dry and warm and calloused, brushed Steve's forehead. "Not hot anymore," he said, softly, as if to himself. He pulled his hand away, but Steve, acting on something faster and more brutal than instinct, caught him about the wrist. Brought it back to his face and kept it close. It smelled—it smelled so warm, fragrant like fresh bread from the oven. He was urged on by some unnamed need, something primal, and strong, and _old_.

He grazed his nose against warm skin, and then a dry brush of his lips. He heard Bucky's sharp intake of breath, drank it up like every other sensation crowding his chest. Steve's mind drowned in a white blankness, shorted out by need. By want.

He opened his mouth, didn't think, just reacted, and dragged his tongue across Bucky's wrist, felt the lovely vein underneath pulse. The taste was salt-sea air, bright copper pennies warmed in the sun. He tasted like _Bucky_ , infused with strength and comfort and just the right amount of dirty promise in that slope-sly grin.

"Um…" Bucky's voice wavered, but he didn't pull back, didn't struggle. It was capitulation, and it tasted even sweeter than his skin. "Steve. I—"

The urge was overwhelming. _Bite down, bite down hard and don't let go until your prey stops struggling._

Steve snapped his eyes open—when had he closed them?—and dropped Bucky's arm like it burned him. It did burn him; there was a fire raging all through him, stoked to life by Bucky's smell and his taste and the sweetness of his surrender.

"Sorry, I just— I— The fever. Still a little loopy, I think." Steve dropped his gaze. He couldn't stand the thought of looking at Bucky and seeing whatever accusation, disgust, was on his face, mirroring what was in his own heart.

"Okay," is all Bucky said, but it didn't sound like an accusation. Just acceptance, mingled with confusion and worry. "I'm just gonna—" And then he was gone, and Steve felt like a complete heel.

It was only a minute later, a minute of moping and self-recrimination, that Bucky was back, kettle in one hand, his wool flat cap in the other. He set the kettle on the little crate they used as a bedside table. "Here's more, when you get hungry again."

"Thanks."

"Look, I know this is gonna sound nuts, but…" Bucky shuffled his feet. "Just, when I'm gone, don't open the curtains, okay?"

Steve brought the refilled mug back to his lips and inhaled the heady scent. It was enough of a distraction that it took a few moments to process what Bucky'd just said. "What? The curtains? Why not?"

"You trust me, right?" A pained look crossed Bucky's face, with shades of regret and guilt, like he wished he could pull those words right back into his mouth.

"Yeah, Bucky," Steve said, voice soft. "I trust you with my life."

Bucky turned away, brought his hand up to cover his eyes, shoulders hunched. Almost like he was gonna start crying again.

"Bucky? C'mon. What's wrong? I told you, I'm fine. Groggy, but fine."

"Yeah. Yeah, all right, Steve." Bucky's back was still turned. His voice sounded strangled, as if his throat had closed up. "I gotta get down to the dockyard. Missed too many days already this month. Fraid I might get my walking papers. I'm lucky they're so hard up for fellas right now."

"I'm sorry," Steve said, for what felt like the thousandth time. He hated knowing he was holding Bucky back in any way. "You shouldn't have to take care of me."

"You're right," Bucky said, facing him again, and Steve's heart sank just the tiniest bit. "I shouldn't have to, and I don't have to." He leaned down and ruffled Steve's hair. God—he still smelled amazing, and Steve tried not to breathe because he didn't trust himself not to act out again. "I _want_ to take care of you, all right? I'd rather do that than any old job, y'hear?"

Steve looked down, picked at a piece of lint. "Yeah. Okay."

"Anyway." Bucky knocked a closed fist against the bed. "Beats getting shit on by birds all day, even if it means potatoes morning, noon, and night." He smiled, but it was nowhere near reaching his eyes. "I really oughta get going." He didn't move; it looked like it would have hurt if he tried, with all that stiffness suddenly in his shoulders, his fingers tight clamps around his cap.

"I'll be all right," Steve assured him.

"Don't—don't open the curtains. I mean it. It'll… it's bad for you. It's… not good. The reaction. With the blood."

The blood. Steve frowned, confused. "Bucky."

"Promise me, all right?"

Steve caught a glimpse of the curtains out of the corner of his eye, noticed that Bucky had pulled strips of cellulose tape across them to keep them from coming apart, and it knocked all his thoughts off course.

"Sheesh, Buck, you didn't have to waste the tape on it."

Bucky glanced over his shoulder. The pained look was back, bordering on devastation, and all Steve could think to do was humor him. "Fine. I'll just sit here in the dark, growing mushrooms."

That startled a huff of a laugh out of Bucky, at least. "Turn on the lights, you goof. Read a book. Do some drawings. Whatever." He bit his lip. Steve noticed he was holding his right wrist in a loose clasp now, and it was almost as though his fingers were tracing over the pulse point, right where Steve had… touched him. "I'll be back before dark."

Then Bucky was gone and Steve really was sitting alone in the dark with nothing to do. He tried reading, but his mind was unfocused, seemed to race. Tried drawing, but after accidentally breaking two pencils between his fingers, realized he probably wasn't in the right mood for it. Tried taking another sip of Bucky's homemade remedy, and felt a little more settled, and a lot more satisfied.

It lasted all of two hours before his boredom got the better of him. He felt cold and stiff, like the blood pumping through his veins had gone on strike and decided to just up and stop. A little bit of sunshine, wan though it may have been, ought to have kick-started his body back into gear.

Steve stood, carefully peeled away the strips of cellulose tape—trying not to admonish Bucky too harshly in his head again for wasting it—and pulled the curtains open, bathing the room in what little anemic sunlight February had to offer.

 

* * *

 

Bucky hated the idea of leaving Steve alone, of lying to him, but he had to keep reminding himself—he wasn't sick anymore. He'd never get sick again.

He hadn't died on him in the night. He'd never die.

Even when everything else hurt like a sword to the chest, that thought cauterized the wound.

Bucky set about his work as if in a haze. It wasn't that he was half-awake, or careless, it was just that the world didn't feel… _real_ anymore.

Every movement was automatic, his body going through the motions, while his thoughts were at home, circling Steve with all the wariness of a child who knows they've done wrong and hopes as long as they don't move too quickly no one will see them.

His focus snapped into the present for one heart stopping second as his fingers slipped on a rope. The sling load, heavy with break bulk cargo, plummeted fast before Bucky's grip went tight again. The barrel had only fallen a few extra feet, hardly enough to be noticed, and if he was lucky, no one had.

"Heya! Barnes!" The company superintendent stomped his way toward him. A big guy with a red splotchy face, he always had that shiny look about him, like a piece of meat sweating under a broiler. Bucky cursed under his breath. Of all the stupid, careless...

"Steady that and get over here!" He waited til Bucky was closer, but only slightly lowered his voice. "Don't want you working the ropes today."

"You kicking me to curb, boss?" Part of him knew he should be more upset at the thought, but the loudest, stupidest side of him felt a strange sense of relief at the idea of packing up and going home.

The foreman crossed his arms, just like Sister Agnes used to when she was disappointed in his clear lack of self-preservation. "You keep that distracted, numbskull face on, I just might. C'mon, kid. Screw your head on right before you lose it. Or a hand, or a foot, or any other part sticking out where it shouldn't. Roll up your cuffs, for God's sake. I see so much as an untied shoe lace, you're outta here."

"Sorry, boss. Only lost my head for a minute. It's just, Steve—my brother. He's been real sick, but he, uh, he's getting better. I promise I'm good. I got this."

"Brother, huh?" It wasn't hard to miss the skepticism in his voice, even if Bucky didn't know what it meant. "I don't really give a rat's ass, pally. Keep your home life at home and your head outta the clouds. Got enough fucking problems keeping all my best guys outta the war without you taking the rest of 'em out under falling cargo."

Bucky swallowed down his anxiety about Steve and hoped like hell it wouldn't come back up. "Got it, boss. Head's as clear as a lake, promise."

And he meant it, even if it still rankled how little the world at large thought to value Steve, who was the best of them all. Bucky was tempted to up and quit right there, because being home with Steve, making sure he was doing okay—that was more important even than a steady wage. He'd lived without money before, and he'd lived without Steve before, and he knew for damn sure which he'd never be able to do without again.

Growing up as they did, slow years passing in the orphanage as they stayed stuck, gathering dust on the shelves, relegated to sitting back on the rare occasion a younger, fresher, sweeter model was tucked carefully under the arm of a new mother, the handshake that'd introduced a bloodied Steve to a rough-mouthed Bucky solidified into a bond stronger than steel. Steve, always too sick, and Bucky, with that feral gleam in his eyes Sister Agnes had tried at first to swat out of him, said to hell with it all and adopted each other.

Never said it aloud, of course, but they never needed to. Steve was all the family Bucky had in the world, all he needed, and, frankly, all he wanted. He hoped it was the same for Steve, in some selfish part of him, that Steve would never find someone else, a better friend, a more deserving guy to look up to. When Steve had turned sixteen and aged out of the home, Bucky—four inches taller and two years younger—stuffed his meager possessions in a pillowcase and followed along after him (and if the Sisters turned a willfully blind eye to his decampment, Bucky didn't take it personally), because his home was with Steve, no matter where it was, no matter if it was roofless, cold, uninhabitable. Didn't matter.

Family was family, and home was home, and to Bucky, Steve was both.

 

* * *

 

Bucky closed the front door behind him and tossed his cap toward the coat rack, and only shrugged when it missed, landing sad and abandoned looking on the floor.

"Hope you weren't too lost without me," he called out before stepping around the corner into the bedroom. Streaks of pale gray sunlight cut across the bed, which was empty, and Bucky's heart stopped beating.

"Steve!" He raced around the bed, finally breathed when he saw Steve, alive and whole, tucked into the only dark corner of the room. He lifted his head slowly; there was an angry red streak of burned skin across half his cheek and one of his arms.

"Oh thank God. Are you all right?"

"What's wrong with me?"

Bucky edged closer, trying to convince himself that he wasn't afraid.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have gone. I should've stayed here with you." His heart pounded in his chest. He swallowed and tasted bile, rising on a wave of hysteria.

"Bucky," Steve said again, louder. "What—is— _wrong_ —with me." Each word snapped out like a punch to the gut.

"I know." The words were coming out too fast; he was panicking, but he couldn't stop. "I know I shouldn't have lied to you, I wanted to tell you, I really did—"

"You knew this would happen?"

"—but I didn't want you to hate me. At least for a little while."

"Bucky—"

"I wish I could have done things differently, but it was the only way, Steve. You have to understand." _Shut up, shut up, shut up, look at him, he hates you, he'll never forgive you, STOP TALKING._ "It was the only way." This last was weak, barely loud enough to hear, but Steve's eyes narrowed.

"What are you saying? _You_ did this to me?"

"I didn't mean to!" Which was the biggest lie he'd told yet, but it was just what people said in these sorts of situations, to mitigate the damages.

Steve stared at the bed, seemingly lost in thought, or shocked into silence.

"I remember waking up—" he finally said. "I thought it had just been a nightmare. You brought those monsters in here. You let them kill me." He turned his head slowly back to Bucky. "You killed me."

"No! Steve. Listen, you gotta believe me." He knew how desperate he sounded, how pathetic. "I—I only wanted to protect you. To save you."

Steve laughed, and it was the worst sound Bucky'd ever heard. He looked so small, crouched in the corner, small and weak and helpless and all the things Bucky'd tried to fix for him. Bucky took a slow step toward the curtains, arms raised in surrender. "Hang on a sec. Lemme close these back up, and we can talk about it, okay?"

"I wouldn't." In the shadowed corner, Steve's eyes were as black as coal.

"What?" Bucky closed the curtains with a whoosh and felt an inexplicable gust of wind at his back.

He only had half a second to wonder before Steve grabbed him by the neck and slammed him against the opposite wall. His fingers felt like steel rope, cutting off whatever breath Bucky wouldn't've been able to take anyway, not with Steve's eyes gone dull, cloudy amber, his mouth a gruesome shock of sharp white.

"It was the only thing keeping me from ripping out your throat."


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I managed to squeeze every vampire-related cliche into one chapter.
> 
> Chapter specific warnings: There are some consent-related issues in this chapter (more specific information provided in end notes). Please be aware and avoid if necessary.

 

The world took its sweet time coming into focus, persisting in darkening all the corners of Bucky's vision with a storm-gray haze.

 _Steve._ He remembered… red. Steve was all… red… and white… hurt…

"Steve?"

"I'm here."

Bucky tried sighing, but it got caught in his windpipe. "What happened?"

"I choked you until you passed out."

"Ha ha." That didn't make any sense, even if Bucky's throat felt like it'd been bruised and swollen to the size of a tree trunk. "We get into the bad hooch again?" he rasped out.

"You turned me into a vampire and then I almost killed you." Steve sounded angry. It was kinda electrifying.

"Oh," Bucky said. "The _real_ bad hooch. You, young man, are drunk. Looks good on you." He assumed. He was still having a little trouble with his vision. Every time he blinked it only made his eyelids grow heavier.

"Must've hit your head," Steve said, still angry, his tone clipped. Short. Knee-high to a toad. "You seem a little concussed."

"No, _you_ are." Bucky broke into uncontrolled giggles, each one scraping his throat raw. "Gon' sleep now, Steve."

"Bucky, no. Pretty sure you're not supposed to—"

"G'night, I love you, buddy." He tried to reach up and pat Steve on the shoulder, but his arm just sort of flopped in front of him like a cooked noodle.

"Damn it, Bucky, stay conscious. Keep your eyes open." Steve was slapping his face, halfway between gentle and stinging, and Bucky smiled, tried to lean into the smooth curve of his too-big palm.

Everything was growing dark again and it felt—it felt real good to fall back into it.

"...really love you...r stupid face..."

 

* * *

 

When Bucky woke again, his shirt was damp and his head was pounding out a Gene Krupa drum solo.

His face was wet, too, and he remembered, suddenly and with great clarity, Steve's sharp teeth, that dangerous flash of white, and slapped a hand against his neck.

It came back clean—no blood, no wounds.

Something small thumped wetly against his temple. He picked it up out of his lap. A crumpled page of the newspaper, soaked through.

From his right came the sound of more paper being ripped, and Bucky finally took notice of his surroundings: In the front room, slumped against the legs of their old rickety wooden chair, sideways and ungainly as if he'd been set in the seat and left to sag to the ground with no one to hold him up.

Another bit of balled up paper thwacked against his nose, followed by the sound of a throat being cleared somewhat sheepishly. He looked up and saw Steve in the hall outside their door, leaning against the jamb but coming no further in.

"You're awake," Steve said. He didn't necessarily sound happy about that. Bucky couldn't find it in his tired body to blame him.

"Really wish I wasn't," he said, still hoarse. He blinked again, noticed Steve made no move to come in from the hall. "Why're you out there?"

"Well, being dead and all means I don't exactly live here anymore, doesn't it." His voice was as dry as sawdust, and it heartened Bucky to hear it. He always did like Steve at his brittle sharpest, ready to throw himself into any fight like his words, his skin, his very bones were made of knives.

Then his actual words registered and Bucky could only move his sore throat to swallow.

"What?"

"Fuck you, Barnes. Invite me in."

Then it hit him, like a punch to the gut.

"God, Steve. I'm sorry. Come in, already. My head feels like an anvil hit it, took me a while to remember, is all."

"Tell me about it." Steve inched forward, then took a more decisive step once he felt no resistance. "You passed out on me again mumbling nonsense so I went to get help. But the sun hadn't set yet so I came back. Found myself locked out of my own damn home, even with the door wide open."

"I'm sorry." The paint was peeling on the door jamb, Bucky noticed.

"For forgetting?"

He tossed one of the wet balls of newsprint to the side. "For everything."

"Yeah, well, fat lot of good that does me."

Bucky didn't know what to say to that, so he just concentrated on getting himself off the floor. Which was actually pretty complicated when half his body didn't seem to want to follow the same orders as the other half. He felt himself tipping, readied himself for the inevitability of the fall, accepted it as his due, only to have a hard, thin arm curl around his ribs, keeping him upright.

He flinched back, hard, remembering Steve lunging at him in the bedroom.

"Don't—!" he said, at the same time Steve said, "Shit," and dropped him unceremoniously back onto the chair. The old thing felt like it was one wobble away from collapsing beneath him.

"You're scared of me now," Steve said, entirely without inflection.

Bucky swallowed, brought a hand up to his neck to rub at his bruising flesh, and finally looked at Steve. "Yeah. I mean. A little." The hand made its way to his face, hiding his eyes. " _Christ_. Steve."

But—but was it really? Dread hit him like a baseball bat to the stomach. He'd never even stopped to consider. It could be one of Mrs. O'Leary's _demons_ staring down on him, sliding into the last vestiges of its host in one last gut-twisting imitation. Could be that Steve died in that bed, was dead and gone forever, and Bucky'd done it to him, signed his death warrant with his own spilled blood. He'd sure sounded like Steve, when he first woke up, before he'd found out what Bucky'd done, and he'd smiled like Steve, when he was still smiling at Bucky instead of looking at him like he was the lowest form of street scum. He had Steve's eyes and Steve's voice and Steve's slightly awkward way of moving, but that didn't necessarily mean—

It didn't mean anything.

Bucky's head was still pounding and his stomach was tied in so many knots he was surely about to throw up all over his and Steve's shoes.

"You're such an ass, Buck," Steve said, and it was tinged with contrition, with affection and exasperation, just slightly, just the barest fringe of it like the tip of a feather against new skin, underneath that oh so familiar righteous anger.

"Fuck," he breathed out, as relief nearly bowled him over. "Steve." He just barely stopped himself from saying _It's really you_ like the concussed idiot he was.

"Yeah it's me," Steve said, and maybe Bucky hadn't stopped himself after all. But there was a hand on the top of his head now, the cold weight of it soothing away the throbbing ache in his skull, and nothing else mattered.

Bucky slid to his knees on the floor before Steve, compelled by some unstoppable current. Everything hurt. Everything hurt and it was all his fault. He lurched forward, wrapped his arms around Steve's middle, clutching at the excess folds of his always-too-big shirt. His forehead nudged against Steve's belly, and he let himself cry—just once, not loudly, but with all the force of hurricane behind it—while Steve's cool hand roamed through his hair, unsure.

 

* * *

 

It wasn't benediction, nor mercy, nor forgiveness.

It wasn't quite comfort, either.

It was more like… mourning. A moment of shared grief, spent and gone in the same time it takes the cold air to swallow the fog of an exhaled breath.

 

* * *

 

"Get up," Steve ordered. "Get off the floor." Bucky complied slowly, all his limbs moving in languid arcs, as if he were ready to fall asleep. Steve thought maybe he needed a doctor still, but Bucky's eyes were focused, even if his movements weren't.

It was dangerous—Bucky on his knees before him. It lit a fire.

Steve had to throw sand on that fire, somehow, because when the heat took him, when the smell of Bucky and the sound of his blood rushing through his veins overwhelmed him, as it had when he first woke, he couldn't trust himself. That's when the _other_ took over. The nameless feeling, the animal instinct.

No, best to get Bucky on his feet, a good few feet away, away from Steve and his new strength that could pin him to the wall, could wrap an arm around his neck until he grew red and still and heavy against him.

The smartest thing to do, the right thing to do, would be to leave. To leave New York altogether. Get as far away from this place as possible. Get as far away from Bucky because—oh, Steve was still furious with him. Still felt the twitch in his jaw and his fingers that ached for Bucky's submission. And Bucky—

Bucky would give it to him. Steve could see it in the miserable slope of his shoulders. Bucky would lie down for Steve and let him take and take and take until there was nothing more to give and nothing in the world frightened Steve more than that.

He twitched a finger toward the ragged bandage on Bucky's arm. "Homemade, huh?"

Bucky laughed; it sounded like a sob. "Yeah. My own special brew."

"You ruined the kettle."

"Ruined a lot of things." He seemed to catch himself sinking into morbidity and with a tight press of his lips roused himself. "Was a terrible kettle anyway. It's all yours, now."

"Good riddance, huh?" And maybe Steve was having a little bit of trouble wading out of his own spell of morbidity.

"Look, Steve, just give me a minute and I'll be gone, all right? Out of your hair forever."

Steve paused. Took a step back. "You think I want that?"

"You tried to kill me, so. Yeah. I think that."

"Damn it, Buck, if you would just stop and _think_ instead of doing all these things for me like you know best, then maybe we'd never have—"

"Yeah, we'd never have!" Bucky cut him off, suddenly red-faced and fierce. "You'd be dead! You'd be dead and I'd be burying you. Or would you not want my help with that, either?"

Bucky was up now, coughing into his fist and storming about, all his limbs seemingly following the same set of orders again.

They'd fought like this before. Well, maybe not entirely like this, but Steve still knew it would pass. That Bucky's shoulders would take on that carefree looseness of his again and he'd breathe out through his nose and call Steve a stupid punk before pulling him under his arm or into a brotherly hug.

Bucky always had been the only one who could pull Steve out of a fight, even if it was just the two of them.

But Bucky's shoulders stayed rigid this time, set and rectangular like a tombstone.

Steve could feel the fire, not quite tamped out, building up again. The animal inside wanted to fight, wanted to _take_ , wanted Bucky underneath him, loose and falling apart. He didn't know who he was anymore.

For once, Steve found he only had it in him to fight one or the other—Bucky or the need.

His mouth tugged into a grim line. He didn't much like Bucky's odds.

 

* * *

 

The silence stretched, and Bucky could feel it along every nerve, pricking at him. This was Steve, _his_ Steve all right, stubborn little bastard, and now was the time he'd usually give in, and he wanted to, oh how he wanted to, but not today. Not over this. Over Steve's life.

"Well?" he said, finally, because the ache in his head had moved down into a ringing in his ears and at least words were a distraction. "Got anything to say?"

Steve blinked up him, slowly. Those lashes, too, could be something of a distraction.

"You remember," Steve started, tugging at his bottom lip with his thumb and finger in a thoughtful—and distracting—way. "You remember that time you set me up with that pretty redhead from Bushwick? Ginger?"

"Course. Sweet girl. You liked her."

"I did."

He couldn't help but grin a little and raise an eyebrow, even through whatever minefield Steve was surely walking him over. "She liked you, too, if I remember correctly."

He'd purposely stayed out late that night, taking his time at Brady's, nursing the one beer he had money left for well after it'd gone warm and unpalatable. But Brady's had girls from the Local 101 tending there, at least til midnight, and they were both easier on the eyes and easier on his pockets, letting him take up space without contributing more than a few cents to their till.

He'd shuffled home slowly, taking time to admire the architecture in buildings that always looked more refined under the city lights. Daylight only illuminated all the cracks and flaws. He ran into Ginger on her way down the building stairwell, adjusting a bobbing pin in her hair, a smug and satisfied curl to her lips that filled him with a strange sense of pride. _Atta boy, Stevie._ His grin grew into an honest smile, just thinking back on it.

"Bucky," Steve said, surely remembering too. But he definitely wasn't smiling. "If you think I've gone this long not knowing that 'Ginger's' time was bought and paid for, then I've got some bad news for you." Words soaked in enough vinegar they could've pickled tree bark.

"Look, Steve—"

"No, I get it. It was the only way to get me in bed with a girl. That's not the point I'm making."

"There's a point to this?" That was the headache talking.

"Screw you, Bucky. I'm not a little kid that needs taking care of. I'm not some broken toy for you to fix. You think I can't take care of myself. That I'm some kind of... pet mascot, and you're so proud of yourself for keeping me around, treating me like a real man, like it makes you some kind of hero."

"Shut up, you know that's not true." Bucky wanted to throw up again. The last thing in the world he thought he was was some kind of hero. And Steve… that Steve could think Bucky only saw him as, as _broken_ when he was the best, the bravest—

"You do these things for my own good and you never even ask me if it's what I want!"

"You telling me you don't want girls?" A low blow, and he felt his stomach drop just putting the words out there.

"I'm telling you I don't want this!" Steve's arm swept up and down his front.

"Well it wasn't exactly my first choice either!"

Silence struck as they hit another stalemate.

"Steve—" And, fuck, he hadn't meant it to come out so desperate and broken. "Steve."

It was all he could say. His only justification. Just: Steve. Everything he was, everything he meant to Bucky, everything that Bucky would've given his own life to protect.

He reached out a hand, but let it drop before it could go and do anything stupid like brush against the hair at Steve's temple, or cup his cheek, or skim across those illegal looking lips.

Something lit up in Steve's eyes, filled with heat, and danger. He took a step forward.

Bucky took one back.

Steve took another step forward. Bucky retreated again, until the wall banged up against his shoulders and brought him to a halt.

"Oh," Steve said, casually, as he ran the cuff of Bucky's shirtsleeve between his thumb and forefinger. "I get it."

"Get what?" The air around them was suddenly thin.

Steve's hand moved from his cuff, drifted up his arm and gripped his bicep. Bucky inhaled sharply, not sure if it was fear or lack of oxygen or something else making him tremble. Steve's other hand circled his wrist, the same wrist he'd put his mouth on that morning. With an acute desire, Bucky longed for him to do it again.

But Steve only said, "Why you treat me like you're the only one who gets to break me," voice a growl. He leaned in, slow, assessing, _predatory_ , and Bucky sank back against the wall as far as he could.

"Steve, no." This was it. Steve was going to finish him this time.

But Steve stopped short, his breath shaking and almost-warm against Bucky's parted lips.

The brush of his mouth was soft, so soft, the first stroke of graphite against a blank canvas. Bucky's heart pounded against his chest, and he let out a stuttering, long gust of air, as if he'd been holding it in his whole life. Maybe he had.

But this wasn't—

Steve hadn't just—

He'd always wanted to know, secretly, shamefully, what it would be like to touch Steve, to drop soft kisses along his skin, but to actually—

"You gonna break me, Buck?"

" _Wha_ —"

Steve growled again and crashed against him harder, inelegant and demanding this time. His lips were as cool as his hands, and just as possessive. Bucky froze, tried to turn his head— _not like this, not like this_ —but Steve boxed both hands against his cheeks, kept their mouths sealed together, his nose mashed against Bucky's cheek, parting his lips only to bite down with blunt teeth.

Bucky melted into it.

"This is why you did it, isn't it Buck?" Steve breathed hard against Bucky's mouth. His whole body rocked forward with it. "Why you couldn't just let me die? Let me be with my ma?" Another nip to his lower lip, and Bucky let out a pathetic sounding moan. "Sister Agnes always said you had a little devil in you. That what you want? Want this devil in you?"

He grabbed Bucky by the wrist again and twisted hard, shoving at Bucky's other shoulder, turning him, so that his chest and cheek thumped against the wall. "Say it."

Bucky had a moment of panic, adrenaline vibrating all through his heart like a paint mixer, his thoughts a wild scramble. That thump—the walls were so thin, and the men in suits, they already knew the building, knew who to take and lock up and do God knew what to. And if they came when Steve was doing… what he planned to do? What Bucky already knew he wouldn't stop Steve from doing?

"Keep it down, would you?" he urged. "The neighbors'll hear."

"The neighbors are dead."

"You… you killed them?" Bucky sent out a silent prayer for old Mrs. O'Leary. But he'd made his choice. He'd done this unforgivable thing. He'd sacrifice the whole block for Steve. He was no hero. He was weak; he was the monster in the room.

"Not yet," Steve breathed, right into his ear. "Not unless they hear something they shouldn't hear." And fuck, that shouldn't have made his prick twitch like it did.

"You're—you're not a devil, Steve." Bucky believed that.

"But you still want me in you."

"No," he lied.

He lied because _yes_ , he wanted it, this unspeakable thing. Wanted Steve's hands on him. In him. Anywhere, anything Steve wanted. But that was the thing that truly set a pain through his heart. Steve didn't—couldn't want this. He'd never wanted it _before_.

"No?" Steve said, feigned innocence in his voice as one of his hands snaked around Bucky's waist, brushed against his hips, curled roughly around the tightened fabric over his crotch.

"Ah—fuck." Bucky let out two gasps in quick succession. Words wouldn't form, but he needed them to. Desperately. "Not unless— _God_ —not unless it's—what—what you want."

Steve's hand stopped, but only for half a second before resuming its unrelenting torture. "So now you care? Now you care what I want?"

"Damn it, Steve." He braced his free hand against the wall. "Couldn't let you die. Would've died too. Can't… can't live without you." It was too much, far too much, the feeling in his heart and the sensations Steve was pulling out of him. Bucky squirmed, gained just enough room to turn and pull Steve up to him by the back of his neck. He kissed him hard, kissed him like a man drowning, desperate for Steve's air.

The kiss he got back was angry, unsatisfied with that answer.

Bucky tried to catch his breath when Steve finally pulled back, but all he could manage were a few choking lungfuls, burning their way up through his bruised windpipe. He planted his forehead against Steve's and it felt warm, Steve felt warm, for the first time since George left.

"I'm sorry," Bucky said. "I'm sorry."

Steve eyes were impossible to read. "Shut up. No more fighting. No more talking."

He started walking backwards, pulling Bucky along with him with one hand fisted in his shirt, the other tight around his waist, slipping underneath the band of his trousers and painting Bucky's bare skin with lightning.

Two steps into the tiny bedroom Bucky heard the sound of cloth ripping, and tore his lips away from Steve's to frown down at his shirt. He managed a discontented grunt before Steve was back on him, practically climbing him, stripping Bucky's shirt off his arms and throwing it over his shoulder like its very existence offended him.

His own shirt soon followed, and then two belts were clattering to the floor. Shoes next.

Bucky felt dizzy all over, mad with a passion that was finally, _finally_ unmoored, and he swept his arm over the bed, knocking the blanket and thin pillows onto the floor. He clambered down on top of them, Steve still clinging to him like a fierce piece of moss, touching everywhere, always touching, until Bucky's legs were under him again and Steve was straddling his lap.

Everything was a frenzied scramble then, and Bucky surrendered to it, too overwhelmed and overpowered and _relieved_ to do anything else. Steve wrestled him on to his stomach, and it was a struggle Bucky was only too willing to lose. Soon Steve was tugging his trousers down and off, pawing and pulling him into whatever position he wanted with only an imitation of resistance on Bucky's behalf.

Bucky crawled forward on his hands and knees; there was some pleasure to be had in the chase. Steve pounced on him, trapped him with a wiry arm, pulled him up so his back was flush against Steve's chest. His open mouth ran up the side of Bucky's neck, all the way up behind his ear. Bucky squeezed his eyes close, gave up on trying to keep his heartbeat steady, and then he was being pushed down by his shoulders, manhandled to the floor, arms stretched above his head, cheek mashed against the blanket.

"No, not like this," Steve murmured before he flipped Bucky over again onto his back, easy like Bucky was light as paper.

Steve's eyes flicked from side to side, up and down Bucky's body as if he were fighting with himself—over what, Bucky couldn't figure; he'd already surrendered, already laid himself bare for the taking. That internal fight must've ended quick, though, because it was only a half second later Steve was covering Bucky's neck with wet kisses, sliding his fingers through the fine hair on Bucky's chest, and grinding his hips against Bucky's with delicious fervor.

Bucky could only gasp—and sometimes cough—while Steve laved over what seemed like every inch of him, sometimes with soft lips and warm tongue, sometimes with flat teeth and blunt fingernails.

Bucky couldn't remember ever being so turned on. His every cell was wired to a battery, ready to send off sparks. It didn't matter how wrong, how fucked up this was, not as he ran a hand through Steve's hair, tugged on him enough to bring his head back up, kissed him with two hands cupping that beautiful, sharp-angled jaw.

Everything slowed down then, with that sweet kiss, by mutual agreement or by Steve's surrender, Bucky didn't know. Their hips took on a less frantic, more wave-like pace; they rolled in to each other, causing little ripples of heat that seemed to pass between them. The rhythm was intoxicating, and their pricks pressed together between their bodies, warm and wet and sheltered. He kept kissing Steve, soft, slow kisses that left them both breathless. Steve nipped at his lower lip, almost playful, and Bucky could have sworn he felt a smile against his lips.

They kept at that slow, lazy pace for what felt like forever, moving together, breathing together, featherlight caresses along arms, sides, faces, caught in a dreamlike warmth.

Eventually Steve's breathing sped up, and so did his hips, and Bucky followed along, swept up in Steve's current, until Steve was pitching forward into the hollow of Bucky's hip. Bucky felt the tremble under his skin, marveled at the slack beauty of his face as he started to shoot. Shoulders stiff, back bowed, Steve jerked his head like he'd been punched, and suddenly his eyes were wild, feral, yellow, his brow ridged, his teeth gleaming white and sharp as they sank into Bucky's shoulder.

"Steve, oh shit— _shit_ — _Steve_." Pain—but better than pain; clean, baptismal—sang bright and Bucky was going off like a _bullet_ , arching up and kicking his leg out and pounding the flat of his hand against the blanketed floor.

"Bucky, I—" Steve breathed out, voice thin. "Oh God. What did I—? _Fuck_." It came out high-pitched like a whimper. "No no no no."

He tried to tell him _it's all right, pal_ but it came out more like a contented hum.

Bucky felt Steve roll off him then, or thought he did. The world was still a little buzzy and blurred out. Maybe he was still out of it from earlier, or maybe it was the blood loss, but keeping his eyes open and his brain turned on was something suddenly unimportant in the grand scheme of things. Steve had only taken just a little… just a little bit of him. Much less than Bucky gave him for breakfast… and it wasn't unusual for him to fall right to sleep after sex…

He closed his eyes, reaching for Steve as the darkness sank heavier on his lids, but found only the coarse blanket under his fingers.

 

* * *

 

Bucky woke. And immediately winced.

His shoulder stung where Steve bit him. A thin red line dripped down into his pit, still wet. He must've only been out for a few minutes. The spattering of white on his stomach hadn't yet dried either.

"Steve. Hey." He sat up with care, and reaching for his ripped shirt pressed it against the wound on his shoulder, only regretting after he'd done it that he'd have to mend it _and_ scrub it clean later. He quickly pulled on his pants, which were thankfully still intact. "Steve?"

He wasn't in the front room. Not in the hallway, either. Bucky leaned his head around the corner of the stairwell, but all was quiet and dark. Steve wasn't even in the building.

He felt his heart stop, felt a sting in the crease of his eyes, dropped his stupid head against the wall. His shoulder didn't hurt anymore, but it throbbed, nonetheless. It wasn't guilt—couldn't be guilt. He hadn't broken Steve, he hadn't, no one _could_ , and yet—

It was the first time Bucky'd ever known Steve to run away.

He looked heavenward and sent out a prayer, pathetic to his own ears. _Please come back._

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Consent warnings: Sex involving a possibly concussed character and a character having an outside force possibly influence his emotional state.
> 
> Information about the Local 101 Bar Maids Union sourced from [Brooklynology](http://brooklynology.brooklynpubliclibrary.org/post/2009/11/04/So-Whatll-It-Be.aspx).
> 
> I rewrote this chapter like 18 different times and finally just did the least helpful thing and cobbled all 18 versions together to make... this. *leaves it here with a flourish* *swishes away* *abandons frankenchapter to the wild* *no possible repercussions can come from this*


End file.
